I’m so grateful for godly friendships I have made along the way. These friends have encouraged me and sustained me through the good, the bad and the ugly parts of life. Godly friends have helped me keep my joy even when life seemed dark. I wish I had time to talk about all my godly friends who have helped and inspired me.
Proverbs 18:24b tells us, “…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” I have a friend who exemplifies this verse even with miles and miles between us.
Stephanie Brown and I first met over 25 years ago when she and her husband came to our church in Montreal to see her husband’s uncle get baptized. Ron had made a profession of faith and was following in the next steps of declaring to the world that his salvation was real and that he would follow Christ. After the baptism, we were all together and of course I started talking to Stephanie. The friendship started and we have been talking ever since.
Back in those days I remember we’d get on the phone and both she and I would be cleaning our homes while we chatted. Our conversation always has been filled with encouragement, discernment and lots of fun. She has been a source of great inspiration to me to pursue God. Her testimony is one that impressed me with how God sought her and she responded to Him. Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
I also love how God brings people together and we can connect the dots, so to speak. I would have never met Stephanie if her uncle-in-law hadn’t been in our church, been saved and then baptized. This brought them into Montreal (from the Toronto area). But even better, her husband, Greg, knew my husband, Pierre, from long before when they both lived in northern Quebec. His parents were led to the Lord by Pierre’s father. What a great God we serve!!!
Over the years when they’d come into Montreal to visit family or we’d go to Toronto to visit ours, we’d always stop for a visit even if it had to be a quick one. I have a couple of great memories of visits. I remember one visit to our home just before we moved to the States where our very young girls all played together. There were toys everywhere but they were as happy as we were as we talked and talked.
Another visit was to Toronto where we all got together at the home of Kim Phuc Bui (an amazing Vietnamese woman who survived some horrors in her country, came to God and lives a life of joy now in Canada. You can read her book by buying it here). As we fellowshipped with everyone around, we captured exactly what our friendship embodied when we took a picture of our daughters, heads together and such peace on their faces. Friendship like this doesn’t come often into our lives.
“Sometimes we have a friend and we sense that our souls are very closely connected. We know that the connection is above time and space. We know that wherever we are in our lives we will always remain friends. Even if we do not see each other for years, we are able to pick up right where we left off. This is what people mean when they say friends forever.”
Author Unknown
I believe Stephanie and I exhibit this author’s thoughts on friendship. We were a great example of this in June, 2023, when we got together after 11 years! It was amazing and the time flew as we sat in the park and talked and talked. Our four girls walked talked as well. Picking up just where we had left off and catching up on life.
I will be forever grateful for modern technology which allows us to catch up weekly with each other as well as encourage, exhort and inspire one another in God’s Word. Do you have a true friend who is willing to do the same? If so, you are as blessed as I am.
And just to say one more thing about my dear friend, Stephanie. She is so sweet and artistic and full of energy that I just had to name one of my daughters after her. My Stephanie is now 17 and she is so much like Stephanie Brown that I just sit back and smile. I love you, dear friend!
I love to close these posts with a song and this is a song that makes me think of Stephanie. She truly never leaves home without her Saviour, her Friend.
